The Italia Adventure begins...

28 May 2026

Stressante. The Italian word for stressful. 

I realise now, two days into my life in Florence, Italy why Duolingo teaches you this word before even being able to count from 1 to 10.

We arrived on Saturday late afternoon and Alessandro met us at the door of our new apartment (we being Steve, my husband, and I). We immediately meet his beautiful mother Maria who is our landlady, and who speaks not a word of English. Now you may be thinking, that’s okay – we can use Google translate, which of course is what I had been thinking. However, pretty much everywhere we go, we are in old, thick brick or stone walls where service to our phone does not penetrate well enough. So, this ends up being an exercise in frustration whenever we try.

I have learned that not speaking Italian (and advising people of that unfortunate fact) does not stop them talking to you at great length – in Italian – and looking at you expectantly for a reply.  Which is exactly what Maria does as Alessandro tries to hurry her back into her apartment next door to ours.

I’m not going to go through a step-by-step description of where we went and what we got up to in our first 2 days in our quest to get permission to stay in the country (a strict requirement within 8 days of arriving).

To be fair, I knew it was going to be stressful, I knew not many people were going to speak English well enough to help us properly when we would inevitably get stuck in the Italian bureaucracy. I knew this because even the visa application process in Australia with the Italian consulate was crazy!

I did think I would be able to rely on internet research to figure my way around the system and get a little prepared. But what I didn’t fully grasp before I got here, was all the conflicting information on the internet, and different reported experiences from people commenting in visa discussion groups. In the end, I probably should have realised that the only thing that I could prepare for is that my experience was going to be completely different to anything written anywhere, and couldn’t possibly be predicted or planned or prepared for. Which is exactly what I didn’t prepare for, and exactly what happened.

Let me try to condense my experience as much as I can! And if you already know me, you’ll know that this will not be an easy task for me.

Firstly, as soon as I arrived I did some fresh internet research trying to see what the process should be upon entering Italy. Originally, from the consulate in Australia they told me – just apply at the local police station for a permessio di soggiorno (permission to stay) and apply to sponsor my husband – all within 8 days of arriving. That sounded pretty simple when I was in Australia. After all it was just one very short bullet point on the bottom of the information for filling in the Visa application form!

The research I find has me believing that we need to go to the police station in the city (of Florence) because we entered via France and were driving, we didn’t get our passport stamped when we arrived in Italy. We need to first register our presence, before getting permission to stay.

So off we go to try to register our presence at the first police station, they tell us to go to another specialist immigration police office on the other side of the city. This is one of the most chaotic places I’ve ever been – with at least 300 people all milling around and queueing in different places. We are eventually told to go to our local police station near where we are living, but they can’t give us the address.

Off we go to an address that Steve (my husband) finds on Maps, and it’s now 35 degrees and not yet 11am. Once we get there, we find a construction site – no signs or any sign that it was a police station, or where we might go next. Steve resolutely finds another one, across the other side of our area and off we go again! We arrive there to find a sign on the door that says ‘permesso di soggiorno’ so we think this is the right place! But of course, it’s not open today, so we need to come back tomorrow.

This rather factual description of my experience, doesn’t express my frustration and increasing desperation of trying to talk to multiple different people with no, or very little English, at each stop in Italian, with Google Translate not working most of the time. Most of the people seem to want to help but are unable to because they can’t understand what I’m saying, or simply don’t know the answers to my questions: am I in the right place, and is this what I have to do? 

And it doesn’t describe the magic of the day either, which Steve steadfastly continued to point out to me in the midst of my heightened state of anxiety. Our first stop was to print more copies of documentation, but the printing shop which was supposed to open at 8:30am didn’t open til 9am according to a sign on their door which we read when we arrived at 7:45am. However, directly across the road was another shop which looked hopeful and opened promptly at 8am. The shop owner was very helpful and obliging and copied/printed a few dozen pages and we got on our way for our first police station visit. However, his attention to detail was not so great which I discovered enroute to where I thought I needed them. Looking up from the discovery of missing pages like a miracle appears another copy shop. And he helps printing the missing pages!

And then there’s the kind carabinieri (military police) officer who once he came out into the foyer to better be able to understand our question in English, gave us the final address we needed to go to. A magic reminder, being told by Steve while we’re on a bus trying to get to yet another police station, to look behind me to see the Arno river, the bridges and my first view of the city. Together with a gentle reminder to ‘remember why we’re here’. A final bit of magic, a delicious pastry with custard (my favourite kind), just when I was feeling defeated – to pump a little sugar and a little resolve into my veins.

This is just the first day: 4 police stations; 1 carabinieri (military police) station; 2 copy shops; 1 bar (for pastry); 2 tram trips; 2 bus trips and 4.5 hours of walking in unseasonably, unreasonably hot conditions. Back for more tomorrow, when the local police station opens for permesso di soggiorno…